Yusuf Ahmad

I'm a graduate student in the MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten Group. My research explores ways to expand opportunities for learning by creating for people of all ages - especially young people from low-income backgrounds.

My previous work has taken me from higher education reform in Egypt during the Arab Spring to launching the African Leadership University -(ALU). ALU is a pan African network of universities and youth development centers with sites in Mauritius, Rwanda, Kenya, and South Africa - where we reimagined learning (project based learning, no lectures, etc.) while expanding access through lower costs and designing for equity.

Some of the areas I’m currently exploring include: 1. Making tools, information, and content more tinkerable, hackable, and remixable. How might we make it easier for people to appropriate and remix tools and content? And how might we help people see inside black boxes - and interact with what they find - both as a context for learning and for creating things/experiences that are meaningful to them. Especially in areas that empower people to learn by creating. 2. Finding signals in noise: Proliferation of information, expansion of communities, and growth in sources of information can make it harder to discover ideas, resources, and connections that might be meaningful to a person. How might we help people find signals in the noise? I’m currently exploring this in the context of Scratch and in the context of learning resources. 3. Models for school and for evolving school systems. How might we support the development of learning communities that might empower educators to evolve their learning communities (formal and informal) and the systems they find themselves in?